Saga Opinion Differences in the Saga of whether Vader/Anakin is or was the Chosen One

Did anyone see that before 1999, did they say Vader was the chosen one during Return of the Jedi 1983?

To me, this is not really necessary if they were searching an idea why Vader was able to destroy the Emperor, they simply gave us this;



Luke: ''Your overconfidence is your weakness.''

If you need the chosen one to defeat the Emperor, why do you make Luke say this, and why do you inform us the viewers that Sidious's weakness is his overconfidence, and he can be destroyed by it if you somehow managed to use this.

As far as I see, Sidious was very confident when he was beating Luke with his Force lightning, he was slowly torturing the guy, instead of instantly killing Luke, which led Vader to finally betray his master after seeing Luke getting tortured, and Sidious was too sure that Vader could ''never'' turn from the dark side of the Force. And he told his personal imperial guards to leave the room.



But obviously, Sidious was wrong because of his own overconfidence. Obviously we can interpret this as, ''Vader was the chosen person who will destroy Sidious by using Sidious's overconfidence against him.'' , but to me, without this ''chosen one'' concept it could've been better.

Why not let Vader to turn to the light side without any prophecies, visions or anything else, why not just let the guy to do the right thing with his own conscious, and why do you need an explanation for destroying the Emperor? They told us in RotJ 1983 that Sidious's weakness is his overconfidence, and he can be destroyed by it if you managed to use this somehow.

I know this will not be a popular idea, but I think Vader would be better without this chosen one prophecy. And if anyone knows it, did they ever mention this chosen one concept for Vader during the OT 1983? Obviously they meant for Luke and Leia in the film, but I don't remember they are telling us that Vader was the chosen one in OT, maybe I am wrong.

 

The ST pretty much did away with the Chosen One prophecy and replaced and/or reinterpreted it with the Force dyad prophecy in TROS. Supposedly now also the Sith Rule of Two was supposed to be the Sith interpretation of the Jedi dyad prophecy. Plaguis also tried to create a dyad with Sidious, but failed.


Luke and Anakin are kinda pointless with the whole Chosen One prophecy introduced in the PT and carried into TCW. Moreover the prophecy did not speak of the end of the Dark Side but of the Sith, which was not the case anyone.

Mace and Yoda were on the fence with it even in the PT films. Yoda also in the end felt the prophecy was misread in Episode III.

In the EU the Sith had their own Chosen One prophecy.

Moreover its unclear how balance can take place or be restored as in TROS ending . Since one side winning over the other actually creates imbalance and unbalance( or whatever), which is at odds with the prophecy which was more about the Sith anyway and not the Dark Side which has many adherents and cannot be destroyed anymore than the Light can. On top of that such a scenario is at odds with the Mortis arc, where the Dark and Light has to be carefully balanced out and maintained.

But at length its, just boils down to that the good guys have to defeat the bad guys and the writers have to get to the canonical Light side happy ending until they want to make more movies and repeat.

 

No, it didn't. You can hear Anakin's voice stating that he had brought balance to the Force. I have this deep suspicion that many of us really don't understand what Lucas is saying about bringing balance to the Force.

 

I suspect you are right. Who's fault is that?

 

Luke's first lesson to Rey touches upon that by indicating that there needs to be balance between light and dark ("Balance. Powerful light, powerful darkness.").
There's also Snoke's line "Darkness rises - and light to meet it", which lines up with Luke's teachings.
That's as far as the ST takes it, though. It doesn't really add much, it just summarizes what the other trilogies implied.

 

He is, but between ROTS and ROTJ Obi-Wan and Yoda didn't think so. In Rebels, when Obi-Wan told the dying Maul that he was watching the Chosen One, he had no reason to think that Vader would be redeemed, nor did he in ANH.

I don't think Lucas had conceived the Chosen One idea until the 1990s (I don't buy that he derived from the Matrix, he started writing TPM in 1994 and The Matrix came out in 1999), but it lined up with the ending of the OT in which Anakin destroyed the only Sith Lord remaining. So Lucas seems to have intended for "balance to the Force" to mean destroying the Sith.

About the ST, I don't remember anyone saying Rey was meant to be the "replacement Chosen One" but she is de facto by killing Palpatine who it turned out never died in ROTJ, therefore TROS seems to prove false that Anakin was destined to bring balance to the Force.

 

No, Anakin did bring balance. That's an established fact ("For many years, there was balance" / "Bring back the balance, Rey, as I did").
It wasn't about Sidious dying, it was about the Sith losing their power. Because of what Anakin did, light was allowed to return and the shadow that had taken over the galaxy shrank to its natural size... until Sidious put his backup plan in motion.

Rey and Ben, it seems, are Anakin's spiritual successors. His lightsaber calling to Rey and Ben finally earning it is a sign of that.
The power of their Dyad is the power of the Chosen One magnified.
Perhaps their coming was also foretold in the prophecies of old.

 

Within the context of the conversation, Luke's comment was in the Empire's ability to defeat the Rebellion. It wasn't about Luke being able to beat Palps, or whether he needed the chosen one to do so. Palps' response to Luke was, "Your confidence in your friends is yours." And within that context, it changes the dynamic of your argument. You make a good argument, though.

Luke went there with the intent of saving his father. Defeating Palps was not his primary goal. Luke was relying on the Rebellion to destroy the Death Star and defeat Palps.

To the last part of your argument, and I'm not knocking the prequels, but before they came along, it was simply a story of a father's redemption found by saving his son. Before the prequels, Anakin's redemption felt justified, and the story worked, as you said, as a result of his own conscience.
I don't mean to imply there is a price to Anakin's redemption, but after the prequels were added, it felt like Anakin got off easy in being redeemed. After all the atrocities committed, simply saving your son is enough to wipe it all away? This is an issue that wasn't created until the addition of the prequels to the story. And lastly, no the chosen one prophecy is never mentioned in the original original trilogy.

 

Doesn't being second to the space fascist Regime still make Vader redemption getting off early.

And to be fair Vader wasn't even Anakin until Empire strikes back as well

Trust me...There were plenty of folk even before the Prequels that feel Vader got off easy.

Star Wars has always been flimsy on redemption to be honest.

 

I agree Star Wars has been flimsy on redemption. No argument there.
Vader still got off easy, but his wrongdoings are far less egregious when it boils down to simply being number two in a fascist regime, as opposed to slaughtering children, slaughtering Tusken Raiders, etc., that was added to his list of bad things when the prequels were added. I should have said it's easier to justify Vader's redemption when it's boiled down to being number two in a fascist regime, especially since in saving his son, he also took down that fascist regime.

 

That is fair and probably one of the more debatable flaws with the Prequels in general in essentially making Anakin pretty much a psychopath even without the armor. Or at least someone whose fall to the dark side seems less tragic and pretty much "Oh yeah he was totally gonna downhill".

Now one could argue that we can take Obi-Wan's entire description of Anakin in both ANH and ROTJ as perhaps a bit colored and they didn't have to necessarily make Anakin a "Good Person" first.

But I agree that it does get harder to justify Vader the more you know about him without just going "Well...Space Fantasy logic"

 

I don't know why it should be any different whether Luke is talking about Palpatine's confidence in the Empire's tactical abilities or not, he said Palpatine is overconfident and that is his weakness, I don't think that would be any different when it comes to other things. And that also seemed like to me as a general assessment about Palpatine from Luke, not a specific statement for one thing only. Though, that is a reply to the Empire vs. Rebellion, but the Empire is Palpatine.

Palpatine was also using ''Luke's friends'', to turn Luke to the dark side, so I can't say that Palpatine was only referring to the Rebellion, he was also talking generally about Luke.

 

How does one achieve balance by destroying evil altogether? I have always believed that both good and evil or positive and negative naturally exist within all beings.

I find this a little confusing.

 

As I see it, there are kind of two main theories on what it means to "bring balance" to the Force and I don't think it's entirely clear which one is Lucas's original intent, if indeed he actually ever settled on one.

1. "Balance" means an equilibrium between light and dark/good and evil
2. "Balance" means the destruction of the dark side. The natural state of balance in the Force is one where good reigns. Evil/the Dark Side is a cancerous blight on the Force that throws it out of balance

The sequels tend to support 1, but personally 2 always made more sense to me. The power of the Sith and their evil perversion of the Force was threatening the delicate, fundamentally good interconnection of all living things through the Force. Therefore, destroying them restores balance. On a more abstract level I find the idea that it's desirable for evil to be in equal balance with good abhorrent.

In regards to the original question, clearly Anakin was always the Chosen One since that concept was introduced in the prequels, but it's never really been clear what that means and the sequels have made it even murkier.

 

GL has actually explained the balance of the Force quite explicitly:


"The overriding philosophy in Episode I—and in all the Star Wars movies, for that matter—is the balance between good and evil."

-George Lucas, quoted in L. Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Making of Episode I, 1999


"In each of us we have to balance these emotions, and in the Star Wars saga the most important point is balance, balance between everything."

-George Lucas, Time Magazine article, 2002


"The idea of positive and negative, that there are two sides to an entity, a push and a pull, a yin and a yang, and the struggle between the two sides are issues of nature that I wanted to include in the film."

-George Lucas, quoted in L. Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays


"The Force has two sides. It is not a malevolent or a benevolent thing. It has a bad side to it, involving hate and fear, and it has a good side, involving love, charity, fairness and hope."

-George Lucas, Times Magazine, 1980


"I wanted to have this mythological footing because I was basing the films on the idea that the Force has two sides, the good side, the evil side, and they both need to be there. Most religions are built on that, whether it's called yin and yang, God and the devil—everything is built on the push-pull tension created by two sides of the equation. Right from the very beginning, that was the key issue in 'Star Wars.'"

-George Lucas, Times Magazine, 2002